Samuel Adams beer guy: what's with the accent?`

I’m sure you’ve seen the commercials for Samuel Adams beer. Ole Sam sits off to the side commenting on how good his beer is (I don’t drink, so I’ll have to take his word).

When he’s talking, it almost sounds like he’s trying to have some sort of accent, but is failing miserably.

Any ideas?
(of course, if I DID drink, I’d rather have a Samuel Jackson beer, bitch!)

It’s a very bad impression of Bostonian.

I presumed it was their impression of how the man would have talked, back in the day. But he would really be British-sounding, right?

I had heard (no cite, unfortunately) that the current Boston accent is closer to what Brits sounded like in the 1700s. The intervening years included several decades where French and German influence in the British court altered their accent into what we think of as the “British” accent today. Note the similarity of the Boston accent to the Australian accent (first two major settlements were 1780 and 1890) and you get an inkling of what a 1700s Englishman would sound like.

Of course, the accents of England vary wildly by class, and we know that Australians were almost exclusively criminals. I don’t imagine that a lot of Americans were from the British high classes, although within a few generations we certainly created our own aristocracy.